BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese space probe successfully touched down on the far side of the moon on Thursday, China\u2019s space agency said, hailing the event as a historic first and a major achievement for the country\u2019s space program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Chang\u2019e-4 lunar probe, launched in December, made the \u201csoft landing\u201d at 0226 GMT and transmitted the first-ever \u201cclose range\u201d image of the far side of the moon, the China National Space Administration said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate as it orbits our planet, so most of the far side – or \u201cdark side\u201d – is never visible to us. Previous spacecraft have seen the far side, but none has landed on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The landing \u201clifted the mysterious veil\u201d of the far side of the moon and \u201copened a new chapter in human lunar exploration\u201d, the agency said in a statement on its website, which included a wide-angle color picture of a crater from the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The probe, which has a lander and a rover, touched down at a targeted area near the moon\u2019s south pole in the Von Karman Crater after entering the moon\u2019s orbit in mid-December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tasks of the Chang\u2019e-4 include astronomical observation, surveying the moon\u2019s terrain, landform and mineral makeup, and measuring the neutron radiation and neutral atoms to study the environment of its far side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The control center in Beijing will decide when to let the rover separate from the lander, state news agency Xinhua said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an important milestone for China\u2019s space exploration,\u201d Wu Weiren, chief designer of the lunar exploration program, said, according to Xinhua.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The probe also took six live species – cotton, rapeseed, potato, arabidopsis, fruit fly and yeast – to the lifeless environment to form a mini biosphere, Xinhua said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The landing is the latest step for China in its race to catch up with Russia and the United States and become a major space power by 2030. Beijing plans to launch construction of its own manned space station next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While China has insisted its ambitions are purely peaceful, the U.S. Defense Department has accused it of pursuing activities aiming to prevent other nations from using space-based assets during a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides its civilian ambitions, China has tested anti-satellite missiles and the U.S. Congress has banned NASA from two-way cooperation with its Chinese counterpart over security concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As competition accelerates in space, U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to create a new \u201cSpace Force\u201d by 2020, as the sixth branch of the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the private space race is also heating up, as numerous companies aim to commercialize space travel, such as California-based SpaceX, which has upended the industry with its low-cost reusable Falcon 9 rockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States is the only country to have landed humans on the moon, and Trump said in 2017 he wanted to return astronauts to the lunar surface to build a foundation for an eventual Mars mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASA administrators have said people could be put on Mars by as soon as the mid-2030s, with the agency having landed eight spacecraft there, the most recent in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As soon as 2022, NASA expects to begin building a new space station laboratory to orbit the moon, as a pit stop for missions to distant parts of the solar system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2003, China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States, and in 2017 it said it was preparing to send a person to the moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China completed its first lunar \u201csoft landing\u201d in 2013, but its \u201cJade Rabbit\u201d rover began malfunctioning after several weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese space probe successfully touched down on the far side of the moon on Thursday, China\u2019s space agency said, hailing the event as a historic first and a major achievement for the country\u2019s space program. The Chang\u2019e-4 lunar probe, launched in December, made the \u201csoft landing\u201d at 0226 GMT and transmitted the first-ever \u201cclose range\u201d image… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2820,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2819\/revisions\/2820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}